I suppose my difficulty with staying on topic could be called an attention disorder but I see it as an ability to see what others don't see. More of a big picture view than a narrow view. — Athena

Oooo I like that! ^_^. I probably hold the world record for thinking most subjects in a second or something; no big deal. Thinking of it as a tool rather than an impediment on my journey to fulfillment actually is something I haven't thought much about. You gave me some nice perspective on that.

You might enjoy learning Latin and Greek because our thinking begins in the past, and much of it was lost to us when Rome fell, however, the Renaissance was the resurrection of that consciousness and kick-started the scientific thinking of what we call the modern age. — Athena

I am starting to read Plato from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and I'm enjoying it so far :). I want to read more about Aristotle, Socrates, and more. I know a bit of Marx, Hegel, Kant, and a few others but I have only read surface level content from all of them. If you have great resources that you like I would love them but only if you would like to send them. I would appreciate anything. Thank you again!

Thank you for the reply!

I love the separate examples you gave. I wanted to comment on them:

From this we have one potential source of confusion: mistaking a word for another one (if the person writes or utter one word and we read/hear another word instead). — leo

Within our own mind confusion can arise in that we don’t have perfect memory, sometimes we think about something and forget what it was a few moments later, with only a faint memory remaining that we were onto something but we can’t precisely discern it anymore. Then some time later it may come back, or not. — leo

This reminds me of when you take two different meanings of a word and use the word appropriately utilizing both definitions of the word, and sticking to one sometimes to throw one off. This happens in comedy; someone will use a word in a joke, and the punchline will include the word but using it to describe an unrelated subject (maybe new) so they can surprise the listener(s). I explained that badly but from what I am understanding this is like that. It seems there is a lot of technique specifically in misdirection or deception. I'm starting to think of the idea that "it's not what you said, it's how you said it" kind of thing is really how one specifically puzzles another in any given timeframe for whatever purpose.

George Carlin had this interesting take on how his writing and comedy had been affected by how one switches from comedy to poetry to politics in spoken word. George Carlin on transforming from a jester to a philosopher poet He frames one who uses different (domains of value?) to switch implied intention/seriousness to create ambiguity which could lead to confusion for some. In the video he focuses mostly on how jokes can also have important comments about political or social affairs depending on the interpretation. The interpreted intent of the author obviously also plays into the interpretation of the joke.

Another source of confusion can be attempting to solve a problem and not finding the solution. Sometimes the problem is ill-formulated and we don’t realize it and so we attempt to pursue something that cannot be found. Or the problem has a solution but because we don’t see/understand everything we have a hard time finding it. — leo

I thought this was interesting. I am wondering if I can find any examples to incomplete problems that are seemingly complete enough to solve. By complete I mean problems given their original parameters to start the solving can complete the operation for the solution. I also am curious to know if there is examples of leading one towards a goal that they see as another goal? I suppose a lot of psychological literature about trust and deception would be appropriate for this kind of question. I was interested in the story of Charles Manson purely for the psychological part of it because I find it interesting how even a close group of people can be tormented and tricked into identities they didn't ask for. This connects a lot with me; I sometimes have moments where I am 'afraid' that someone will come and judge me or try to stop me from whatever I'm doing. I don't see this as any outside conditioning although I for whatever reason think that others think I'm odd or too weird even though I have no rational reason to believe so. It's just one of those things that my brain does sometimes and learning about things like confusion and mind games helps me learn how to plan for the next time I'm having a rough time. But I also love learning about this and I'm sorry I possibly digressed; again thank you so much and I love the examples you gave! I didn't spend a lot of time on this reply so if my ideas are unrelated, disconnected, or non-valuable please let me know. Cheers!

What I meant simply (and I phrased it poorly) was that all of us are going to die at some point and whatever we do while living in most parts is to avoid death by surviving or to entertain ourselves to avoid existential problems whether they come in the short or long term. I might be fallacious in how I describe the condition of the world. While I don't hold this view completely seriously (I really am open to changing my mind all of the time, I believe) it makes a bit of sense to me as a simple 3rd eye view of what's going on. What you mentioned about breaking out of the loop is a useful way I would say of why the things I called "distractions" are important and I am not devaluing those things at all. I am simplifying them (probably poorly) to a class of things we do/obtain/achieve/etc.

I have been training with someone in CBT and it has helped me get out of existential loops and anxiety episodes that pop up once in a while. I have passions and I find beauty in something almost every day. To be clear I'm not trying to convince you; just trying to shed more light on what I meant and some connection to my life in regards to what you mentioned with the existential loops.

Hopefully I stayed on topic or added something here! Thank you for the reply :)

I want to thank you everyone for the replies! I am currently reading them and will reply to each when I can. This is amazing thank you so much for reading :)